The Latest from Iran (17 July): A Temporary Freedom

1525 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Aftab reports on the case of actress/filmmaker Pegah Ahangarani, arrested earlier this month, noting that two years ago the hard-line Keyhan warned her not to "sell out the country".

1520 GMT: Economy Watch. Javad Zamani, an MP for Kangavar in western Iran, has said the increase of prices in the country is indisputable, with energy costs for production units rising 20 times.

1515 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. The first photo of student activist Bahareh Hedayat after her release from prison, where she is serving a 9 1/2-year sentence, on a four-day furlough (see also 0520 and 0900 GMT):

1130 GMT: Economy Watch. Hadi Moghadasi, the head of Parliament's Social Committee, claims that debts to the Iranian banking system have reached $80 billion.

1120 GMT: Water Watch. Rah-e Sabz reports that drinking water was cut off for 12 hours in Tabriz in East Azerbaijan. Even hospitals were affected in a stoppage for which there was no prior notice and no provision of water tanks to alleviate the situation.

0910 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. A photo of women's rights activist Mahdieh Golroo after her release from prison on a four-day furlough (see 0520 GMT):

0730 GMT: All-is-Well Alert. Hojetolelsam Hassan Ameli, the Supreme Leader's representative in Ardebil in northwest Iran, has explained that Iranians have the healthiest elections in the world because of the oversight of the Guardian Council.

0620 GMT: Foreign Affairs. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari spent Saturday in Tehran visiting President Ahmadinejad and then the Supreme Leader.

The photo opportunity with Ayatollah Khamenei's was marked with the Supreme Leader's standard rhetoric: "The West, and particularly the United States, is the main adversary of the Pakistani people", as he "pointed to the religious and cultural affinities shared by Iran and Pakistan and lauded the Pakistani people's long history of resistance". Khamenei "expressed hope that God would help the Pakistani nation rid themselves of their enemies as soon as possible" while Zardari "called for the expansion of relations between Tehran and Islamabad".

0530 GMT: Opposition Watch. Hamid Dabashi summarises one dimension of the debate amongst reformists and activists over the next steps in the challenge to the Government and regime, "Iran's Khatami: The Sound the Fury". He reviews the furour over the former President's call for "reconciliation" --- now pulled back by Khatami --- and assesses:

Ultimately the problem is not why Khatami is so weak, spineless, and accommodating to power - projecting his moral and intellectual limitations as "wisdom" or "pragmatism". The problem is that he is all of these things from a position of weakness, facing a tyrannous monstrosity, and in the absence of any more radical positions within the general contour of the current political atmosphere.

In these circumstances, Mousavi's forced silence is in fact infinitely nobler and more eloquent than Khatami's weakling pleadings for forgiveness from a tyrant. Under other circumstances, at the very least, when Mousavi, Karroubi, Zahra Rahnavard and other exiled voices can freely say and articulate their positions, Khatami's conciliatory voice is not only perfectly legitimate but in fact even necessary, as important and crucial as anyone else's.

But when the ruling tyranny has silenced everyone - by assassination, imprisonment, torture, house arrest, exile, fear and intimidation, impoverishment, et cetera --- Khatami's wobbly pleading is so pathetic because it is not stated from a position of free, fair, and democratic encounter with other, more or even less radical, voices. This regime has mutilated the Iranian political culture, does not even have the decency of allowing for a dignified funeral of an aging dissident, and its official thugs attack mourners and cause the death of his daughter - and to this regime and under these circumstances, Khatami says "if" people have done you wrong and been tyrannous towards you, you should forgive them.

Never in the entire history of Shiaism have tyrannised people been so robbed of their moral authority and the sacrosanct term of zolm been so brutally stolen from them, abused and applied to a tyrant. No amount of contextualisation, gloss, or appeals to pragmatism can whitewash that astoundingly immoral utterance.  

0520 GMT: We start this morning with news of a small respite for political prisoners, with several prominent reformists and activists released on furlough. Those given a taste of freedom include Feizollah Arabsorkhi, Behzad Nabavi, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh and Mohammad Javad Emam. Student right's activist Bahareh Hedayat, serving 9 1/2 years, and women's rights activist Mahdieh Golroo, serving 2 years and 4 months, were also let out for 4 days on $700,000 and $150,000 bail respectively.

Maryam Majd, the prominent photojournalist detained last month as she planned to cover the Women's Football World Cup in Germany, was released on bail.